Mexico captures founding member Zetas drug cartel
MEXICO CITY. January 19. KAZINFORM Mexico's federal police have arrested a founding member of the brutal Zetas drug cartel, a man who controlled drug smuggling routes and the kidnapping of Central American migrants in southern Mexico, officials said Tuesday; Kazinform refers to Arab News.
Flavio Mendez Santiago, 35, was arrested along with a bodyguard outside Oaxaca City. He was in charge of operations in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Veracruz, said Federal police anti-drug chief Ramon Pequeno.
Pequeno said Mendez Santiago, known as "El Amarillo" or "The Yellow One," controlled the smuggling of Central and South American migrants and was in charged of moving them to the northern states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, on the border with Texas.
The Zetas are suspected in the disappearance of more than 40 Central American migrants in Oaxaca last month. The travelers were last seen Dec. 16 near the city of Ixtepec along the sun-scorched transit route for thousands who ride northbound freight trains.
The gang is blamed for massacring 72 migrants in August in the northern state of Tamaulipas.
Mendez Santiago also controlled the main overland drug smuggling routes from Central America, Pequeno said.
Mendez Santiago, a former soldier, was recruited in 1993 by the Gulf cartel and years later served as bodyguard for then leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen.
The federal government had offered 15 million pesos, about $1.2 million, for information leading to his arrest; Kazinform cites Arab News.
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